A lifestyle blog of sorts

Bake Off Cookies

The Great British Bake Off is one of very few programs that me and my husband actually both enjoy watching, and pretty much the only thing we sit down to watch as its shown live. It kind of makes going back to school after the long summer holidays ok, because at least its Bake Off season!

Its a weekly tradition that by 8pm on Wednesday evenings dinner is ready and we are sat in front of the TV ready to watch, usually cosy under a blanket. I don’t know about you, but I find it almost impossible to watch without a sweet treat of my own. There is usually no time in between getting home from work, squeezing in a workout and cooking dinner to bake something mid-week, and that’s why these cookies are perfect! You make the dough up before hand in a large batch and freeze in pre-cut rounds, ready to pop straight into the oven when you want one (or two, or three…). YES THAT’S RIGHT, HOMEMADE COOKIES BAKED STRAIGHT FROM FROZEN IN 11 MINUTUES! You really can’t go wrong.

So here is the recipe…

Ingredients

150g dark chocolate (doesn’t have to be expensive, I use supermarket own brand)

225g unsalted butter, ideally left out of the fridge for an hour or two

200g golden caster sugar

200g dark brown soft sugar

1 beaten egg

1 tbsp golden syrup

2 tsp vanilla extract

300g plain flour

125g cocoa powder

2tsp baking powder

Method

Melt the chocolate and leave to cool briefly.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large bowl until light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg, syrup, vanilla and melted chocolate.

Mix together your dry ingredients then add to your chocolately mixture until you have a smooth dough (you could also add some chocolate chips or chunks here if you like)

Transfer your dough to a large sheet of baking paper and roll into a large sausage shape (roughly 40cm long), leave to chill in the fridge for an hour (or up to 3 days)

Pre-head the oven to 190 degrees or gas mark 5

Cut the dough into 1cm thick rounds, and freeze and you don’t want to bake right now, they are perfectly good in the freezer for up to 3 months

Bake the cookies spread out on baking parchment for 6-8 minutes. Take them out when they are still very soft, but have cracked on top. Leave to firm up for 5 minutes and you will have gorgeously chocolately cookies that are still slightly soft in the middle, perfect to eat while you watch bake off!

After chilling in the fridge for an hour

Little raw dough rounds, ready for the freezer

Cracked but still soft – time to take them out of the oven

Please comment below if you decide to make these cookies and let me know what you like to eat during bake off?